Vladimir Putin named politician of year again

Sociologists say that even the protest wave of 2011-2012 has not given new national-scale politicians to the country

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MOSCOW, December 16. /ITAR-TASS World Service/. According to a survey of the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), the majority of Russians for a third consecutive year have named President Vladimir Putin the best politician of the year. Sociologists say that even the protest wave of 2011-2012 has not given new national-scale politicians to the country. The poll suggests that a mere one percent of citizens called Alexei Navalny, former candidate for the post of Moscow mayor, politician of the year.

The FOM sociologists asked the citizens to choose a politician or a public figure that has “distinguished himself in the outgoing year,” the Kommersant daily writes. The first place, as in the previous two years, went to President Vladimir Putin — 32% of Russians named him the politician of the year. The second place is shared by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky (six percent each).

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, head of the Civil Platform party Mikhail Prokhorov and leader of the Communist Party of Russia (KPRF) Gennady Zyuganov shared the third place (two percent each).

More than a third (35%) of respondents was undecided. “Some citizens are not interested in politics at all, and their number remains almost unchanged from year to year,” the Kommersant daily quotes FOM head Alexander Oslon as saying.

Leonty Byzov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences agrees with him, noting that the rating leaders “once again are the political old-timers” who are known to all. “Even Navalny does not exist yet as a politician on a nationwide scale, as his popularity is just Moscow’s phenomenon,” the expert believes.

According to him, new politicians should have appeared in the wake of protests and liberalization in 2011 “that could overshadow Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky of which everybody is sick and tired,” but this did not happen: “We have a very stable picture.”

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